Know Your Customers' Lies (and Lyes)

· random,social media,test system

As discussed previously, my wife runs her own business selling bath and body products. We were discussing social media and I suggested blogging/tweeting about ingredients that go into her products. Talk about all of the different oils and fragrances and things. I happened to suggest telling people what lye is. My wife responded that a lot of women don't believe lye is in the "natural" soap that they buy.

Of course there's lye in soap. It was in Fight Club. (Before my wife started doing this, everything I knew about soap came from that movie.)

So I think basic sales training says to know your customers' needs, but the motivations behind some of those needs may not be the truth. Some that I've heard as a Test Engineer:

"Our operators won't make mistakes."

"We can test everything we need just by using golden components from the rest of the system"

"We're projected to move a million units next year."

"It's a 16 bit part, so it's accurate enough."

"R & D has tested everything already."

In the end, while she liked the idea of telling people about all of the ingredients, we agreed lye would not be spotlighted.